Description:4to., pp. [xl] 1320 [cxxiv]. Mostly Roman and Italic letter. Printer's device to title-page, repeated on final leaf recto (a colophon leaf with verso blank). Some nice woodcut headpieces. Sig. 3Q4 [pp. [1231-1232]] is blank save for woodcut device on recto. Browning, some spotting, a few leaves short in the bottom margin (blank), bound in contemporary vellum, overlapping along the long edge, soiled, ties removed. All edges red. Old MS shelfmark label to foot of spine (shelfmark repeated in pencil on front pastedown), a very small and unobtrusive old armorial ownership or library stamp to title-page.

Second and best edition by Friedrich Taubmann of Wittenberg (1565-1613). Celebrated most for its clear and complete commentaries, the product of nearly 20 years' work (Schweiger), the book is also of interest for the contemporary world it shows up: there are letters to Taubmann by the celebrated figures Justus Lipsius, Daniel Heinsius, Isaac Casaubon, and Joseph Scaliger, and the prefatory poems include a short work, by a Bohemian called Christopher Cinesius, in Syriac and Greek! Taubmann made use of collations provided by Jan Gruter (1560-1627), the last librarian of the Palatine library in Heidelberg, whose priceless manuscripts were removed to the Vatican in 1623, after the defeat of the elector Frederick of Bohemia. Gruter produced his own edition of Plautus based on Taubmann's work in 1621.